Not Me..............................

      The God with whom you are having problems, or whom you hate or ridicule, is not the God we are talking about.

     When we talk about goodness, an animating intelligence in the universe and in our hearts or a pervasive positive unity or presence, we are not talking about an old bearded guy in the sky, Parvati, or a Jewish Palestinian baby.  We are talking about a higher power, a power that might be called Not Me, a kindness, a patience, a hope, which is everywhere, even in our annoying, self-centered, fraudulent selves.

     The lower powers—greed, hatred, addiction, ignorance—are easy to connect with and describe, but a higher power is not easily defined.  It can't be controlled, manipulated, or appropriated.  It opens us and heals us and brings us together, and turns hearts of stone into human hearts.  Anytime you are experiencing love, you are experiencing the God we are talking about.  But as novelist David James Duncan says, "God" is the "worst nickname ever."

-Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope